Every day, Shaun Blugh ’03 wakes up at 7:30 a.m., eats a quick breakfast and takes the subway to City Hall, where he meets with business leaders, community organizers and local businesses to increase the diversity of Boston’s leadership personnel.
Blugh has been appointed Boston’s first ever Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). As CDO, Blugh will work with Boston’s new Office of Diversity to facilitate diversity in city government personnel.
After screening and interviewing potential candidates from all over the country, Mayor Marty Walsh’s administration announced Blugh’s appointment on December 2, 2014. Blugh assumed his duties on January 5 of this year.
At Andover, Blugh was involved in Afro-Latino-American Society and found that race and class played large roles in nearly every facet of his life.
“Like on MLK Day… they always had a lot of events that helped us get started having the discussions. You just saw the push for… becoming a school that really tries to live up to ‘Youth From Every Quarter,’ and to make a better student body and better institution and prepare students for life afterwards… Once all those events started taking place, it’s something that made me feel like I made the right choice,” said Blugh in an interview with The Phillipian.
Blugh divides his responsibilities into three main areas: recruitment, minority employment support and diversity training.
“We’re trying to get diverse talent at senior management positions, powerful positions, and to help shape city government,” said Blugh.
Blugh plans to support smaller businesses in the city by giving more city contracts to local businesses that employ minorities, and he hopes to make Boston more welcoming as a result of increased diversity training for City Hall members.
“We’re trying to help managers and senior positions in City Hall understand…different cultures [and] how they can manifest in making the culture [in Boston] feel more welcoming. It’s important for people to feel welcomed,” said Blugh.
To Blugh, being the CDO is an opportunity for him to change the general public’s image of Boston, and he says he’s willing to work through the challenges and difficulties surrounding race and identity.
“Boston has a perception of being unwelcoming to people of color, and I hope we can get to the point where we can help change that discussion and make it that Boston is now in a place where… the people are running to look at that history, and then also look at what we’ve learned from it and look at how we’ve become a stronger city because of it,” he said.
Born in 1986 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Blugh lived on the tiny Caribbean nation for five years, until his parents decided to move to Brooklyn, NY. From a young age, he has been aware of the issues surrounding race, gender and class identity and how they’ve shaped his childhood.
Since his childhood, the fight for equality across racial and class barriers in America has played an important role in Blugh’s life. In fifth grade, he enrolled in Prep for Prep, a program that prepares students of color from New York City to apply to independent schools, according to its website.
“My parents helped make me very aware of it. Through programs such as Prep for Prep, you become, at a young age… aware of the differences and disparities in regards to opportunities, public versus private school, etc. and it’s something [that] has helped shape my academic career,” said Blugh.
Armed with the skills to perform well in a more rigorous learning environment, Blugh moved from his old public school to the Buckley School, a private K-9 institution. From there, he entered Andover as a Junior and then attended Georgetown University.
In eighth grade, when he was faced with a choice between Andover, Exeter, Hotchkiss and Loomis Chaffee, he found that the students and curriculum at Andover were important factors in his decision.
“It made me feel more comfortable. I just thought, the student body felt more right for me, and the curriculum had more flexibility there, and it just felt like more of what I wanted to do while I was in high school,” he said.
Blugh still looks back fondly on his experience at Andover. When asked if he had any advice to give to the students here today, he simply encouraged everyone to really get to know their peers.
“You rarely get to spend the amount of time you do at a place with such quality individuals and teachers, that you should truly take that advantage. Everyone should really feel proud to be part of a school that’s so progressive and so supportive,” he said.
